The present invention generally relates to data searches, and more particularly relates to personalized data searches utilizing social activities.
Web searching has become a main tool for Internet users to find the information they need. Researchers and engineers have made tremendous efforts in developing approaches to determine how relevant and important a webpage is with regards to a search query, so as to help users to quickly find what they are looking for. However, individuals have various backgrounds and preferences. Therefore, for the same search query, different people may expect to see different results.
Personalized searching, which customizes search results based on a user's interests, has the potential to significantly improve a user's search efficiency. Some conventional solutions extract users' interests from a variety of information sources, such as search history, emails, desktop documents, and so on. For example, a user's emails may contain unsolicited advertisements and broadcasting messages that do not match the user's interests.